"在生活里我是以友情為主" 和 "我最看重的是友情" 內裡意思應該不一樣吧?
The former one means that you always hang around with your friends(but not your girlfriend/parents). (physically)
The later one emphasizes that you take friendship into priority. (mentally)
I would like to have a try. "在生活里我是以友情為主" in English "Friendship is always in my daily life." (??)
As my English is not good at all, I think Cantonese will understand my words and correct them.

I understand it this way: 以(with) __＿＿＿ 為(as) 主(principal, foremost, preeminent thing/part/aspect/some other appropriate noun)。 If you want to translate real literally into English, we'd usually need some sort of noun: "with fruits and vegetables as the main source of nutrients"; "with sport and leisure astheir bread and butter". Of course, English doesn't always use circumlocutory phrases like that, so you'd be more likely to just hear "business built around/focusing on sport and leisure" or something along those lines. (That is to say, the English translations might sound a bit unnatural, but that's cause I'm sticking closely to the Chinese.)

This is a useful structure, and one I encounter a lot when perusing thesis titles, especially case studies. For example: 海洋邊界劃定：以金門區域為例。 Here it's like 以(with) ____ 為(as) 例(case/example).

Here's a couple other examples and literal-leaning translations:

以學生為主： with students as our highest priority以麵食為主的第一道主菜：with noodles as the main ingredient in the first entree (we'll not excessively mangle the English translation by retaining the same grammatical structure given by 的 )

I understand it this way: 以(with) __＿＿＿ 為(as) 主(principal, foremost, preeminent thing/part/aspect/some other appropriate noun)。 If you want to translate real literally into English, we'd usually need some sort of noun: "with fruits and vegetables as the main source of nutrients"; "with sport and leisure astheir bread and butter". Of course, English doesn't always use circumlocutory phrases like that, so you'd be more likely to just hear "business built around/focusing on sport and leisure" or something along those lines. (That is to say, the English translations might sound a bit unnatural, but that's cause I'm sticking closely to the Chinese.)

This is a useful structure, and one I encounter a lot when perusing thesis titles, especially case studies. For example: 海洋邊界劃定：以金門區域為例。 Here it's like 以(with) ____ 為(as) 例(case/example).

Here's a couple other examples and literal-leaning translations:

以學生為主： with students as our highest priority以麵食為主的第一道主菜：with noodles as the main ingredient in the first entree (we'll not excessively mangle the English translation by retaining the same grammatical structure given by 的 )

You can try "我以友情为重". "重" here means "重要"
"在生活里" seems trivial in this case, because you always live in your life. But if you say "在日常生活中我以友情为重", it implies that under certain circumstances, friendship may not be your priority.

viajero, please help
"在生活里我是以友情為主"
I cannot think of any sentence with " with ... as..." in this case.
Thank you in advance.

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我上面想表示的是，把「以。。。為主」這個結構翻成英文不見得每次都會用到「with... as X」，其實，自然英文很少會這麼翻。我只是嘗試給一個大概的瞭解。但如果一定要用的話，或許可以這樣解釋：I live my life with friendship as the central pillar. 對話中這麼說太文言了吧。當然不限於使用該結構就能寫得更好一些，譬如：Friendship is the most important thing in my life/My life is built around my friendships.